Earl of Harewood

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:28

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? We're privileged today to welcome ashore as castaway, someone who's done very valuable work in the world of music, both as writer and administrator, the Earl of Harwood.

Earl of Harewood0:38

Yeah.

Presenter0:39

Lord Howard, you've been a prisoner of war, which to some extent is analogous to being a castaway. From your experience, do you think you could adjust yourself with enforced solitude?

Presenter0:48

Very difficult to say. I'm really a gregarious animal and in prison we were too thick on the ground. On a desert island, one would be the reverse. I think one adjusted to conditions in the war that looked impossible in peacetime and I suppose I could to a desert island, I hope.

Presenter1:02

Your interest in music is well known. How do you rank as an executive? Very bad. People like to say that they're bad pianists, meaning they're middling bad. I'm a good deal worse than that. I'm a non-pianist, really. I started on the clarinet in the war, but we got too many prisoners in the camp I was in, and there was no room to practice after a bit.

Presenter1:18

You have a very large collection of records, Evelyn. When did you start collecting? I started as a schoolboy. I used up my pocket money on it then, and I've really never looked back. I've always used records.

Presenter1:29

Are they catalogued? Are they tidy? Yes, where women knit for relaxation. I bring my catalogue up to date. How did you set about choosing your ultimate eight? Did you have any plan in mind? I think I did. I think I went for the eight composers who've meant perhaps most to me in the last 30 years or so, and then tried to find a proper variety amongst the eight selections, chamber music, opera, symphonic, and so on. I hope to provide me with variety on the desert island. What's the first one?

Presenter1:56

The first one is a piece by Personal. I had to decide between Personal and Monte Verdi of the pre-1700 composers. And I chose Dido's Lament When I'm Laid in Earth from Dido Niniers.

Presenter3:07

Janet Baker singing When I Am Laid in Earth. What's your second choice?

Presenter3:12

Books up.

Presenter3:13

There's such a lot to choose from, but in the end I went for a piece of chamber music.

Presenter3:18

for wind instruments, the serenade in B-flat, the opening movement. It's very hedonistic music.

Presenter3:25

really something chosen for pure pleasure.

Presenter4:27

An excerpt from the first movement of Mozart's serenade in B-blat, Fort Wengler conducting soloists from the Viana Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter4:34

Now, you're the seventh Earl of Harwood. Before that, the Lassells family can be traced back in England for a good many hundred years.

Presenter4:41

Yes, I had an ancestor who fought at Marlston Moore as a colonel on the parliamentary side. They won that day in Yorkshire.

Presenter4:48

Now, your father married Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal, so that you're the first cousin to Her Majesty the Queen. Yes. You were at Eton. Did you go straight from the into the army during the last war? I had a short period working on an agricultural committee in Yorkshire between Wales.

Presenter5:04

You joined the Grenadier Guards, your father's regiment, in the ranks.

Earl of Harewood5:07

In the rack

Presenter5:08

Yes, and you were wounded and put in the bag as a lieutenant in Italy.

Presenter5:12

As a potentially valuable hostage, were you given special treatment?

Speaker 15:12

So we can

Presenter5:16

Well, the Nazis liked to get at people, for instance, who'd left the country through their relations, and they tended to do the same or try to do the same in the war. And there were a whole host of us who were cousins or something of that sort of people that they felt important on the opposite side. And we were...

Presenter5:31

Uh can

Presenter5:32

At night, apart from the rest of the camp, and we had guards looking through the door at inconvenient moments and so on, it had its disadvantages. You were in Coldett for part of the time. I was there about five months, yes. And when you came back to this country?

Presenter5:44

I went on in the army and eventually went to Canada as an ADC to the Governor General with my uncle.

Presenter5:52

That was very enjoyable. I felt it was the first break I'd really had in the army. I seemed to have spent the whole of the rest of the war on foot. And this was in great contrast to that, the peacetime life of Canada, which was the first I'd ever known as it grown up.

Presenter6:05

You have on occasion acted as counselor of state during the monarch's absence abroad. Yes, twice.

Presenter6:11

Now you're you're family at home.

Presenter6:13

Highwood House in Yorkshire is one of the

Presenter6:16

finest show places in England. When was it built?

Presenter6:19

It was

Presenter6:20

Started in the 1750s.

Presenter6:22

And each generation has added to the family treasures. Yes, and even to the house, because Victorian families were large and house grew with them, unfortunately. It must be a tremendous task to keep such a place afloat.

Presenter6:35

It's difficult because after all it was designed for a much bigger population than it gets nowadays.

Presenter6:42

But of course, it becomes worthwhile if it's really your home, if it's somewhere you grew up and feel that instinct towards that one means by the word home. You have opened it to the public. Yes, I think it's a good idea for a great variety of reasons, of which perhaps the most fundamental is that it prevents the rooms in which one can't really live all the time from dying off by non-use. Yes, and you can share your pleasure and some of the treasures. That too. Can we have your third record now? What next?

Presenter7:11

The third one is a piece from an opera by Verdi, Don Carlos. I'm a particular fan of Verdi's. His music means great deal to me. And Don Carlos, I think, is one of the most fascinating of the pieces, just below the most popular.

Presenter7:27

We did a production while I worked at Cotton Garden in 1958.

Presenter7:31

of this opera that I think was about as good as anything I've seen on the operatic stage and one of the leading performers from it, Boris Christophe, in fact sings the great monologue of King Philip in this record.

Earl of Harewood7:45

Uh

Earl of Harewood7:50

No wake we are mad.

Earl of Harewood7:59

Oh, there's a lot of people who are in the middle of the morning.

Earl of Harewood8:08

Heaven known.

Presenter8:42

What is Christopher?

Presenter8:44

Did you hear a lot of music as a child, Lord Howard?

Presenter8:47

I think a certain amount. My parents occasionally took me to performances. They occasionally played gramophone records. And I went whenever I could to concerts and then a little later to opera. I believe during the war, before you joined the army, you organized concerts for hospital patients.

Presenter9:02

Well, in a minor way, when I was at home, when we had a convalescent hospital at Harvard, I used to try and persuade people, for instance, when Saddler's Wells was playing in Leeds, to come out and perform for the patients. And I must say, I used to try and influence what they're saying.

Presenter9:15

There's a story that during your spell as Prisoner of War, you read the whole, however many it is, volumes, of Grove's musical dictionary. Is that true?

Speaker 19:17

Prisoner of war.

Presenter9:23

Well, not entirely. I only got as far as S and then we were moved, or I was moved.

Presenter9:28

What was your first active interest in music? Well, I was asked while I was at Cambridge by Benjamin Britton to become president of the English Opera Group, and I'm a great enthusiast for his music and for the work the English Opera Group did and does.

Presenter9:42

And I was allowed to do a good deal more than presidents sometimes are. So that was enjoyable.

Speaker 19:46

Job

Presenter9:47

Had you decided that music was to be your life rather than some public appointment? I think I always had from the time I was at school and used to tune in the radio to Italy during the war. You did a lot of journalism about music and you founded and edited a monthly magazine called Opera.

Presenter10:02

Yes.

Presenter10:02

This more or less took you to the Royal Opera House Garden Garden? Yes, I was at first, I think it was a trustee at first and then a director there. And then I managed to wangle myself onto the administrative side. This was a salaried post. Yes, yes, indeed. And this involved a good deal of travelling. A lot of travelling, discussing of schedules, of contracts, of dates.

Presenter10:25

And so on, and of course a good deal of listening to performances abroad. You also embarked on a monumental writing job, the revision and amplification of a standard work on opera.

Presenter10:36

Yes, the Kobe Compedo Provocative. That was quite a large undertaking. I think we worked out there must have been something like half a million words in it, of which I had written about half, which is a frightening thought, indeed.

Presenter10:46

But then you widened your scope by becoming artistic director of Edinburgh Festival. This involved all the art.

Presenter10:51

Yes, I had of course before that been responsible for the Leeds Triennial Festival, not a full-time job, but the Edinburgh one certainly gave one a lot of scope. You made a lot of innovations there, which do you look back on with most pride?

Presenter11:04

Well, I think the criticism that I found of Edinburgh before I went there was that it had no point, that it was a conglomeration of events without any central purpose. And I tried to...

Presenter11:16

bring back specific particular interest to give it point and inasmuch as I succeeded over that I was pleased.

Presenter11:24

You resigned from Edinburgh now. What's your next project?

Presenter11:27

I'm hoping to do a job, not quite a full-time one, for the new Philharmonia Orchestra, which is a very different type of thing. You might say the other side of the fence, really, because Edinburgh was an employing body, which got its subsidy from outside, and this is a self-employing body with quite different types of responsibility.

Presenter11:50

What about another record? What's number four?

Presenter11:52

Number four is the first movement of Schubert's C major quintet. Why do you choose this?

Presenter11:59

I

Presenter12:01

I think that Schubert is the composer I've always come back to in moments of stress and doubt and misery generally, and I couldn't conceivably be without a piece of Schubert on the Desert Islands.

Presenter13:11

Part of the first movement of the Schubert quintet in C major, the Casil's festival performance.

Presenter13:18

One of the arts that you had to deal with in Edinburgh and also at the Leeds Festival was jazz. Do you enjoy jazz? Yes, I do. I'm rather a difficult jazz listener in the sense that I rather like organised jazz, which I'm told is quite wrong by my jazz friends. I, in a word, prefer Ellington to trad.

Presenter13:35

You have traveled about the world a great deal, listening to artists, seeing new operas, absorbing musical ideas.

Presenter13:40

Just how Philistine is this country in its attitude to the arts? Are our government subsidies as miserably small as they seem in comparison?

Presenter13:49

I suppose they are. I think the truth is we learn much less quickly officially than we do as a public.

Presenter13:56

I think that we give subsidy an insufficient quality to allow artists to fail, which sounds like a bad reason for giving subsidy. What I mean is that every experiment, and an artist must try out new things, must succeed if it is not to exceed its subsidy. And that I think is a wasteful way of giving subsidy.

Presenter14:15

Now in the theatre you were one of the founders of the English Stage Company which presented quite a number of plays of social protest. You took an active part in one protest yourself when you became chairman of the Committee of Honour of the Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment. I believe this was your only appearance in the House of Lords. Yes, it was. I'm not really a politician at all by nature. I don't like the exaggeration that politicians have to use to make their case, but I felt very strongly on this particular issue.

Presenter14:43

It seemed to be not only wholly wrong in itself.

Presenter14:46

to take life officially in this particular way, but also futile. The statistics and the reasoning never suggest to me and don't for one moment prove that

Presenter14:57

Capital punishment prevents murder.

Presenter15:00

Well going back to the arts, what is your greatest ambition? In the arts. I think I believe so strongly in the Greek sin of hubris, of I think it's always put in as insolent pride, or that's what one's taught at school.

Presenter15:12

that I don't think I would ever dare to admit it except to myself, what I hope to be doing in 10 years' time. Right, we'll leave that and go on to our fifth record. What's that?

Presenter15:21

That's further from the beaten track than the other four pieces.

Presenter15:27

A piece from an opera by the Czech composer Janacek, who's a very particular enthusiasm of mine. The opera is The Cunning Little Vixen.

Presenter15:36

Uh this is

Presenter15:37

scene, it is really a scene, shows the victim.

Presenter15:41

imprisoned, as it were, rather suitable for Desert Island, in a farmyard shut up by a kennel and longing to be away, but longing in a curiously, I don't know what the word is, innocent way.

Presenter16:56

An excerpt from an orchestral suite of Janacek's music to The Cunning Little Vixen, and it's played by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. What's your next record?

Presenter17:05

The next one is part of the first movement of Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements. I thought that one needed something truly invigorating for a desert island, and I don't know anything really more invigorating than this.

Presenter18:16

The opening of Stravinsky's Symphony and Three Movements conducted by the composer.

Presenter18:22

Lord Howard, how good a castaway would you be? How practical are you? How good with your hands?

Presenter18:27

I didn't really know. I was, I think, romantic about this sort of thing as a child and I liked the sort of adventure story which involved.

Presenter18:35

It's participants in doing things, adventure stories usually do. And I think then I thought I could do things, but whether I really did, I wouldn't know a bit too certain. Could you live off the land?

Presenter18:45

I could have an effort at it, yes. I used to be able to milk a cow when I was very small, which I was told was more useful than knowing one's Latin verbs. Not on a desert island.

Speaker 118:52

Yeah.

Presenter18:54

Now, suppose you had some kind of a craft that you either built or acquired somehow that was washed up, a raft. Would you try to escape?

Presenter19:02

Oh yes, I think so.

Presenter19:04

Yes, I don't think I'd want to just sit there and hope to be rescued.

Presenter19:07

I think I won't

Presenter19:08

I've got a note of caution here. I think I'd want to have an idea where I could get to, which direction at any rate. That's it. Let's have record number seven. Well, this is very much connected with my time at the Edinburgh Festival. The first concert at the first festival for which I was responsible had Stokovsky conducting Schoenberg's Goody Leader.

Presenter19:26

This is of course early Schoenberg, therefore perhaps surprising to some people who heard it. It's not conducted here by Stokovsky. It has Rafael Kublik conducting who was musical director at Cotton Garden for a good deal of the time I worked there.

Earl of Harewood19:43

Oh, feeling feeling fine.

Earl of Harewood19:59

Oh, you died in the face. Just by me, you clearly

Earl of Harewood20:23

Then are minor.

Earl of Harewood20:27

Oh.

Presenter20:40

Ingeborg singing from Schoenberg's Gorgida. Now what's your last one?

Presenter20:45

The last one is a piece by Benjamin Britton. I tried like anything to find the right piece. I think I'd have chosen something from Midsummer Night's Dream if the recording had existed, but it doesn't. Anyhow, this is from the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, a very favourite work of mine.

Presenter21:01

They

Presenter21:02

Hymn by Ben Johnson.

Presenter21:04

And a very lively, exuberant piece, I think, far the most.

Presenter21:08

a lively piece of any of the ones I've chosen, certainly a characteristic one would need on a desert island, just as I would need a piece by Britain.

Speaker 221:32

suddenly to see, Seated in my silver chair, State and holding by the key.

Speaker 221:43

No more.

Speaker 222:10

Sing to shiny home was made.

Presenter22:16

The hymn from Benjamin Britton's serenade for tenor solo, Horn and Strings, the soloist Peter Piers and Barry Tuckwell.

Presenter22:24

the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter22:27

Well, there are your eight records. If you would have only one of them, which would it be? Well, I must always come back to Schuger, I think. It'd have to be that.

Presenter22:34

And your luxury that you're taking to this island. Now, this is the most difficult of all. I don't know.

Presenter22:39

I can't write. I find the physical action of writing immensely difficult. And as I rather like writing in the other sense, I suppose I'd want a good new typewriter, inexhaustible paper, and a great many spare typewriter ribbons.

Presenter22:55

All or black, not black and red. What are you going to write?

Presenter22:59

I don't know, but I suppose by the end of the first week I'd have some idea.

Presenter23:02

And the one book you're going to take, putting aside the Bible and Shakespeare? Well, no novel. That would be exhausted too quickly. I wondered between a dictionary and an encyclopedia. I think the best encyclopedia, the most comprehensive that I'd be allowed to put into the vehicle that cast me away. Right. And thank you, Lord Howard, for letting us hear your choice of Desert Island Disc. Thank you very much. You never asked me if I could swim.

Presenter23:24

Can you? Yes, good.